


To Lose Oneself (And Find Her Again)

by boleynhowards



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:28:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22214827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boleynhowards/pseuds/boleynhowards
Summary: Ruby dies in a plea to save Weiss.What she didn't expect was for Weiss to die with her.
Relationships: Ruby Rose/Weiss Schnee
Comments: 3
Kudos: 67





	To Lose Oneself (And Find Her Again)

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning for (implied) s*icide by overd*se.

It wasn’t silence but Weiss couldn’t hear anything. Every sound was drowned out by the roars of the Grimm they were fighting or the clot of blood that had poured from her head wounds and clogged her ears. That’s probably why she didn’t hear Ruby scream her name in warning.

One of the tendril arms of the Grimm had slunk high into the air, its target on the blur of white and blue that kept fighting and evading fatality. The Grimm would stamp it out. With this one hit, the blue streak would be out of commission; dead. Only Ruby was able to notice before it was too late.

When she called Weiss’ name and the dignified fighter didn’t respond, Ruby knew what she had to do. Without a second thought and with zero hesitation, she kicked off her left foot, bounded into the air and exploded into a record speed.

Weiss didn’t know what had hit her until she turned around in the blink of an eye to check. A blink of an eye was too long for her to pull Ruby out of the way, and the next thing Weiss saw was the younger girl being crushed underneath a Grimm’s cirrus arm.

The sickening crunch broke the silence, and then her ear splitting scream. She bounded to her teammate, though the bloodied sight of the body told her it was too late to help. Weiss had to though, Ruby couldn’t die like this, there had to be a way-

Weiss woke up.

She was crying, her usually pale complexion puffy and red with tears as she bolted upwards. It was just a dream, nothing was wrong, she was back in bed and she was safe at home. Extending a shaky arm to the side of her bed, she reached out for Ruby for comfort.

The bed was empty.

All that met Weiss’ palm was the soft fabric of her scarlet cloak, and Weiss remembered it all. Her terrified nightmare sobs turned into anguished screams as she balled the cloak into her hands, face planting into the soft material and crying loudly into it.

Ruby Rose died in battle protecting her teammate and partner Weiss Schnee. Weiss would have received a crushing death herself had she not been pushed out the way in the nick of time, though that itself forced her to watch her soulmate as she flashed her a final sorry smile and was turned to nothing.

Everyone had insisted it wasn’t her fault, that there was nothing she could have done to stop Ruby’s sacrifice, but Weiss knew that wasn’t true. Had she been more careful or more alert, Ruby would still be standing here, probably chewing her ear off with a crazy story about something or other. It was her fault that that wasn’t the case.

Everyone had told Weiss that Ruby did it because she loved her, which made Weiss’ guilt increase tenfold. Regardless of how they tried to word it, Weiss knew that Ruby had died because of her. There was no changing that fact no matter how much they tried to insist otherwise.

Still, Weiss couldn’t come to terms with the fact that Ruby was dead. She had taken to carrying the girl’s cloak around with her because she always used to nestle into the neck when she was tired or tug on the sleeves when she wanted some subtle attention. Now she just had the loose threads to play with.

Whenever she made coffee, Weiss always found herself making a second cup and adding extra cream and five sugars. It was as if she hoped for Ruby to come knocking at the door and to drink it in one like she always did with a proud smile. That never did happen, and every time she was finished, Weiss would find herself loading one cup into the dishwasher and pouring the untouched contents of the other into the sink.

Sometimes Weiss would find herself sitting in Ruby’s workshop, polishing Crescent Rose and toying with the unfinished work she had left behind. She knew that Ruby wouldn’t want her beloved scythe to get old and dusty, and Weiss had taken over caring for it so she wouldn’t have to worry about it in rest. She had even given Myrtenaster some improvements too after becoming more familiar with the tools on Ruby’s old workbench - what Weiss hoped Ruby didn’t mind is that she had detached some of the metallic red platings on Crescent Rose to screw onto Myrtenaster’s hilt.

Her new antics didn’t come without her friends noticing, though. Whether it was her teammates or others, everyone had raised an eyebrow at how Weiss had halted all productivity for these tasks that she had previously held mundane. They knew that they all had correlations to Ruby, but they wondered if it was healthy when it didn’t stop.

To channel her grief into something more healthy and to get her out of the house, Yang and Blake had convinced Taiyang Xiao Long to let Weiss write and read the eulogy at the funeral. When she was offered this, Weiss broke down into tears at the honour and hastily accepted, whispering thank yous to Ruby’s father and promising that she would make it the best eulogy Ruby could ever have.

For the weeks leading up to the funeral, Weiss had her sister read over the eulogy many times to make sure it was perfect. Even though Winter had reassured her even more times that it was beautiful, Weiss couldn’t help but feel like it wasn’t enough as she approached the front of the funeral crowd, clearing the lump in her throat and glancing down at the paper she had poured over for so long.

Her speech was a long one, and at many points she found herself having to pause to choke back the tears that were too strong to fend away. When she finished, however, she looked back up from her paper, damp with tears, and to the chairs of guests. There were a few soft cries to be heard, some people staring downward to hide their tears whilst others let them show. Weiss was guided back to her chair by a funeral staff and then the burial began.

She could barely keep herself focused, and was surprised to find herself a little agitated with every shovel of dirt over the coffin and every prayer spoke into the summer air. The whole service didn’t emanate Ruby at all. Everyone was quiet and serious, all in a zone of solitude. Interactions amongst guests were bare.

This wasn’t what Ruby would have wanted. Weiss mumbled something angrily incoherent as the burial leader finished his drawling speech, and if she was in her right mind she might have scolded her sister for convincing her to remove the small jokes that were in her original eulogy draft.

Though Weiss was no mind reader, she knew Ruby well enough to know that this service wasn’t one she would like to be remembered with. There was nothing in it. It was empty and solemn words with nothing exciting, nothing that screamed Ruby.

Weiss felt even more guilty than before once she got back home from the funeral because of that, closing the door behind her and locking it. She didn’t leave her house again, nor did she let her friends in when they knocked. Her responses to concerned text messages grew rarer and rarer until she finally saw Jaune’s essay about how he coped with Pyrrha and started to leave everyone on seen.

That was the problem; she couldn’t cope. Nothing was working. All of the retail therapy packages that sat stacked in her living room proved nothing against the monster of grief in her heart, the scrunched up papers of emotive poetry in her bin doing little to delve into the pain of her soul. At one point, Weiss even found herself trying to chug down a whole bottle of alcohol to distract herself from the pain, just like her mother always had, but the taste was bitter in her mouth and left a fiery scratch down her throat.

Nothing was working. Weiss tried her hardest but she couldn’t go on. There was no escaping the pressure when all she saw was Ruby’s face upon blinking. There was no escaping the pressure when everyone else was all over their partner and it made her feel even more alone than ever. There was no escaping the pressure when everything she did reminded her of Ruby, whether it was watering the vase of roses in the sitting room or purposefully knocking over the soap bottles in the shower so she had another one of Ruby’s messes to clean up.

Weiss was tired, and the face staring back at her in the mirror wasn’t Weiss at all. She looked hollow and thin because of all the meals she had been accidentally missing. Her eyes weren’t bright and full of life anymore, they didn’t even have the arrogant fire that they had when she first arrived at Beacon Academy; they were slate and dull like they had worn out.

The old Weiss had died when Ruby did, and now in her place was a hollow shell of the girl. She wanted her soul back, but she knew that it had crossed through the realms of the living and had branched out into the dead’s territory, accompanied by Ruby.

An idea sparked into her head. She might not be able to pull herself back together, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t break herself apart enough to magically become whole again. Then she could skip coping and finally be at peace of mind once more. Forever.

Grabbing Ruby’s cloak and wrapping it around her shoulders, Weiss traipsed from the bed and into the en suite, grabbing a bottle of pills and locking the door.

Weiss Schnee, or what was left of her, never did leave the en suite, letting go of her grip on life in favour of grasping onto the ghostly red hand that she could just make out against her blurred surroundings.

“I missed you, Weiss.”

She was whole again.


End file.
